Chicago Police Officers Facing Dismissal After Video Shows Their Taking Gang Member To Be Threatened By Rival Gang Members

There is an interesting case out of Chicago where a gang member has reached a settlement with the Chicago Police Department after filing a tort action for intentional infliction of emotional distress and false arrest. The $33,000 settlement followed a controversy over two Chicago police officers — Susana La Casa and Luis Contreras — taking gang member Miguel “Mikey” Castillo into a rival gangs territory and allowing the rival Latin King members to taunt and threaten him. The Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy is now seeking the dismissal of the officers.

It is common to hear complaints from gang members that officers will drop them off in areas controlled by rival gangs. However, on this occasion, the incident was captured on video. Notably, State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez has been condemned nationally for her determined efforts to prosecute citizens who film police in public, including films of abusive police tactics like this incident. Alvarez declined to charge the officers.

The video posted by WBEZ showed the officers standing by with the doors of the SUV open as gang members yelled at Castillo and flashed gang symbols. Worse yet, the officers “made a false oral statement” about the incident to an Internal Affairs detective.

In my view, Castillo was clearly under arrest as being in custody in the vehicle and not free to leave even though he is not cuffed.

I was surprised last week to go walking along the lake on the Northside after my niece’s funeral and seeing new Latin Kings gang signs in the area. Growing up, my friends and I had to avoid gangs including the TJOs, Latin Eagles, and Latin Kings. That declined but Chicago is again struggling with resurgent gangs. WBEZ has compiled an actual map of gang turf: here.

36 thoughts on “Chicago Police Officers Facing Dismissal After Video Shows Their Taking Gang Member To Be Threatened By Rival Gang Members”

Comment navigation

Mike S.,
“When “macho” is king, reason suffers”. I’d take it a step further to reason disappears. “Contempt of cop” is where ego displaces reason. Reason being that they should understand their powers versus the fellow citizens rights. I would add that they see being put into the system with charges dropped as nothing, other than their ego satisfaction, while the rest of us know the ramifications of even an unfounded arrest.

While we have actually only had what we would know as law enforcement since roughly the 1840s (I draw from memory), I’d give the seeds where planted as soon as immunity, in any form, became accepted. Sovereign immunity was the start. Propertied classes have always been given preference, but I’ve always seen them as having more to lose too, so I’m ambivalent. The property class put both life and property on line with the Revolutionary War.

I pretty much agree with each of your paragraphs, I’d just be nit-picking to try to make a point for no reason. I chose NIxon because of my hate of “break-the-door-down” with its whisper cousin “Police, we said police”, but it does go way back. RICO is a cancer that all branches embrace as healthy muscle. The Drug War is another, RICO being it’s child.

“I’d take it a step further to reason disappears. “Contempt of cop” is where ego displaces reason. Reason being that they should understand their powers versus the fellow citizens rights. I would add that they see being put into the system with charges dropped as nothing, other than their ego satisfaction, while the rest of us know the ramifications of even an unfounded arrest.”

Looking at that video, I thought, “Wow, those police officers are the luckiest people in the country right now. What they did could have led to something so much worse than what happened, they should be down on their knees thanking god that they didn’t end up in worse trouble than Cheorge Zimmerman.”

And here’s why: They decided that they would do something they weren’t allowed to do because they had this stupid “little hero” complex or because they wanted to star in their own little 15-minutes-of-fame-TV-reality-cop-show action that they produced, directed and acted in. Yeah. Cool idea, huh? 😎

NOT. Just imagine if they started off to scare and humiliate the guy in the back seat and either he didn’t act as predicted or one of the gang members didn’t act as predicted (and after all, nobody has to act as predicted) and this turned into a minor riot and those officers “had to” shoot somebody, huh? And then? And then? And then an armed gang member on the street has to shoot back? And then somebody has to set the car on fire? And then there has to be a response? And then maybe a little riot? And then maybe a few frustration murders? And then what? Huh?

Started by those two little demigods who figured they could misuse their power?

People don’t always follow your script, you stupid punks. They should be fired, fined, prosecuted, made examples of, given the stiffest sentences available, be forever marked so they can never have a responsible job again, never be allowed to carry a concealed weapon again, never be allowed to seek public office, etc.

The charges should be federal. Look what they DID! That cannot be tolerated anywhere, for any reason, at any time. EVER.

My wife suffers from chronic pain. I wasn’t taking light of the issue. Just the frustration with bureaucrats deciding what constitutes pain management. They have no qualifications to decide, but they do have the law.

Wish there was an edit function, because Mike S., I’ve met and reported to the DEA. Meth has two processes I know of: Iodine or Ammonia. I’ve been involved in selling both. The first we had strict control of because Iodine had strict reporting requirements. The second was looser as ammonia is used in so many different ways.

I got a call from a friend that meth producers had switched to ammonia, he remediated meth labs and called me after he had found his first mobile meth lab using ammonia to give me a heads up. He didn’t want me to suffer from bad publicity if my company sold ammonia to some meth lab (you have to understand all the deviousness involved). I called my company to inform them, met with the DEA a day or two later, and all questionable calls for ammonia were sent to me. And if I got enough info, or set up a buy, the DEA was informed of the former or in our office for the latter.

The calls were quite funny. I would never etch my driveway for painting (big in Sun City at the time) using ammonia gas, or iodine crystals for that matter. Poor one way, really expensive the other. HCl was more effective and cheaper.

The DEA, that group charged with winning the War, don’t care about you. After all, if your taking too much medication, and they know if you are, you’re just an addict. The DEA knows your pain and you over medicate it.

“The sum of the content in your previous four comments represents a nice summation of the mentality behind the illegal acts of many police officers, in far too many instances. It is necessary for us to understand the “why” of these instances occur, as much as we understand the “what” of the wrongness of their reality.”

Thank you, I’ve actually written something not devoid of logic and meaning. I’ve been looking at this for over three decades since Nixon’s no-knock policy (as if you could flush it all down the toilet) and it’s resultant abuse of the 4th, and it’s dangers to both citizens and citizen police. No matter Gene H., I believe the Bill of Rights is the rock of our Republic. The Drug War has turned Search Warrants into Writs of Assistance, Asset Forfeiture acceptable (from RICO, prior asset forfeiture was anathema in the courts), and Swat Teams as dejure, or matter of practice (no dejure isn’t matter of practice in Latin) for even misdemeanors. Swat Teams were by conception for high-violence felony situations but now for misdemeanors because…

“Officer Safety” has become the paradigm. The overriding issue by which police should judge all situations. If you’re better trained in violence, bigger, and have more tools on your belt, escalating first will keep you safe. Unfortunately, those that don’t deserve that escalation pay the price. Go to PoliceOne or Officer.com, you’ll get a lot of “sorry, but better thee than me”. You’ll also get newtimers and oldtimers going “WTF is wrong with the rest of you”. Idealists.

I could also go into “officer authority”, but after hours that just means beating on the female bartender, with every cop responding trying to blame her, trying to intimidate her, and writing fictional reports. But that’s the Brotherhood, a different matter going back farther.

A cop should only be a cop while on duty. A citizen every moment in-between with no more authority or special privilege.

I have two cops in my family, both good people. A bit better before, but still good afterwards, though one had a hard transition. His wife moderated him, grounded him, she is now an Assistant Police Chief. She understood that if I argued against a police practice it wasn’t ignorance, it wasn’t anti-police, it was just another viewpoint. He struggled with insularity, she didn’t. Just an aside to avoid the obligatory “good cops, bad apples, etc.”.

Why can’t we just say some cops are bad, really bad, without the obligatory “cops are good”? I just did it by reflex.

“Why can’t we just say some cops are bad, really bad, without the obligatory “cops are good”? I just did it by reflex.”

Ariel,

I think that we all have been conditioned to it by years of TV shows extolling the police and elected officials, both Federal, State and Local doing the same. I NYC where I was in the Civil Service bureaucracy it was quite telling that from City officials praise and support was always give to the NYPD. Yet the Department infrastructure was dated and neglected, individual officers were often treated badly by the bureaucratic system and the low person on the totem pole was often made scapegoat for institutional errors. Knowing many officers I found them to be smart enough to understand the dichotomy with how they were praised in public and treated badly in private. In my estimation this was one reason for the “blue wall of brotherhood” and an ingrained disrespect for those outside the profession.
Then too, it was a profession that elevated “macho” to great heights of importance. When “macho” is king, reason suffers.

Another factor that needs consideration is that politicians have always found it electorally expedient to be against “crime”. Frightening the populace to exercise control, while garnering widespread public support is an ancient tactic. The more fear you can instill, the greater the license to those who would protect the public.
After awhile, those empowered, begin to believe their own myths. While at some points policing ca indeed be a dangerous job, with mortal consequences, I believe as has been pointed out there are far more dangerous occupations. Somewhere I’ve read the statistic that the overwhelming majority of police officers in NYC never has to fire their gun in the pursuit of crime.

That you bring in the truth that this can’t be discussed without looking at the history of law enforcement is equally important. While certain trends can be traced to the “no knock” policy coming out of the Nixon era and to that abomination of the constitution known as RICO, the seeds of law enforcement excesses date back to the formation of our republic. I truth law enforcement in the U.S. has always had a close interrelation with upholding the interests of the propertied class. We have made heroes of mythic figures like Wyatt Earp, who owned 10% of the Brothels in Dodge City at one point and may well have gunned down the Clanton’s in the “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral” because they were political rivals for his position.

Another historical truth that comes to mind is that the City of Los Angeles, beginning in the 1930’s started to import police officers from the South who were experienced in “Jim Crow”. The purpose was to contain the large Mexican ad growing Black population in that city. Historically the LAPD has been recognized as a corrupt and brutal force, despite the PR machinations of the program “Dragnet”.

Lastly, the deleterious effect of the “War on Drugs” has severely deteriorated our Constitutional protections, again in the name of mindless fear. If a definition of insanity is to continue to use the same methods that have proven failures such as Prohibition, then in the “War on Drugs” our efforts have been insane.

The “war on drigs” is being taken out on those of us in chronic pain.
The “epidemic” and media reports of prescription drug overdoses and deaths never break it down as to the numbers of those who have abused who are not prescribed these drugs but buy them on the street or steal them.
Because the government has been so unsuccessful with the cartels (for whatever reason, complicit or incompetent as 2 thoughts) they instead come after us, changing laws and rules so that people in pain have to go to the doctor more often to get meds that once they could come in for once and twice a year for a script with refills. All that does is make it harder for us, cost more to the insurance companies (and therefore raise premiums) and often medicare as well, take time from seeing other patients who actively need to be seen.
War on drugs? No, it has turned into a war on chronic pain patients. When you can’t get the ones you want go after those least able to fight back.

The sum of the content in your previous four comments represents a nice summation of the mentality behind the illegal acts of many police officers, in far too many instances. It is necessary for us to understand the “why” of these instances occur, as much as we understand the “what” of the wrongness of their reality.

Like Spinelli, I’ll give you an amen also. The War on Drugs has been more destructive than the drugs. I imagine a phone call to the DEA, after the US legalized drugs, from the Cartels:

Cartels: Esse, what are we going to do about this? We can’t live without your market and you have no jobs without us.

DEA: Maybe we can make tobacco illegal. We made the Mafia rich with alcohol prohibition. Get those fields planted. We’ll tread water for the years it takes you to get running…then we’ll hit you hard and drive those prices up. Money all around, especially when we can confiscate property that smells like tobacco. It’s mostly the poor and they can’t fight us after all. They’re trash that both liberals and conservatives would drop by their very use of illegal tobacco. Addicts are scum.

“I sort of get it. I can see how police officers must get very frustrated feeling that they are not really changing anything or making anything better.”

We went through the Peoria, AZ, case of parents being charge with child pornography because a cop Detective saw child pornography and so did a Prosecuter ( the “I can’t define it but I know it when I see it” BS). After about 9 months everything was dropped, but the children went through hell as did the parents. So don’t give Police such pure justification, they deal with the laws and they can be as ugly, biased, even perverse in their interpretation as anyone else. They do not suffer their mistakes, though, others do. They walk away fairly clean, and go on to promotion.

The pictures of their children in the bathtub would only be sexually suggestive, and sexually exciting, to someone so inclined. That Detective and Prosecutor found them so makes me wonder as to their proclivities.

My mother has pictures of me and a girl at three taking a bath together. I’m sure it would excite the police. It doesn’t excite my mother or me, we see it as childhood pictures. But those easily excited alpha males, alpha by brutality not intelligence, should go tumescent before arrest if only to clear their heads.

Obviously, I took this far afield from your meaning, but police enforce laws, they don’t change anything and they don’t make things better, they enforce laws. They also game them because they’re human. Remember the Iraq Vet that ran stoplights, carefully, because he recognized his wife was having a stroke and minutes counted? The cop that chased him tried to stop him at the emergency room door, tried to stop his wife from getting treatment but the emergency personnel told the cop to back off in no uncertain terms (police power is not absolute, in medical emergencies it’s certainly second), and at the end of it all he tried to charge the Vet with “assault on an officer” (a special privilege above what the rest of us can claim as an assault) because he got a scratch, an ouchie, at some point. It was thrown out in both courts.

The Gates-Crowley affair ( and I have a lot of respect for Crowley) is an example of gaming it. Crowley couldn’t arrest Gates for disorderly conduct in this circumstance unless Gates was outside his house. Crowley kept asking Gates to come outside, even after Gates had answered as to the purported break-in, at which time police procedure was moot if the home owner or resident tells you to beat feet, he did it repeatedly Gates being loud and obnoxious to Crowley, and willingly to continue it to the porch gave Crowley what he needed to arrest Gates, well after Crowley had no reason to be there. By getting the screaming Gates on the porch, Crowley could then justify an arrest by disorderly conduct. That was the gaming, the contempt of cop. Police are people, with all the flaws, but their flaws can leave you with fewer job opportunities while they struggle with why it’s a big deal to you because it isn’t to them.

They live in an outlier world but think it isn’t, even to the gross misunderstanding that their world is normality.